The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1887-06-30

Ever-shifting Boundaries Of the Rest.
dence Area-Phasss Of the Ebb and Flow
os the vast Tide Of Humanity.
Did you ever see city that was like
glacierf Look at New York. It has
moved slowly northward for q hundred
years. Hemmed in by two rivers, upon
anarrow peninsula geographically called
an island, II has been denied the privilege
Of spreading in all directions, q privilege
that belongs to all other cities. 1t has,
therefore, grown as a plant grows toward
the light-slways in the direction of the
mainland lying on the other side Of the
Harlem river.
Consider . moment that this island is
only thirteen miles long, and at its
broadest point is but two and . half
miles wide, and incloses in that longitu-
dinal space over million souls, and you
will at once perceive how great has been
The typographical influence upon its
development and upon its municipal
character.
1t has been subject from It's infancy to
Longitudinal pressure that has robbed II
Of some of the characteristics of all other
cities and given 1t peculiarities that are
worth considering.
First of all it is pre-emlnently the city
of unrest. 1t has no memorials of its
growth. No mural background. No
associations that cling round localities
and old houses and historic works
With the exception of an oval spot lying
near the Battery, and still referred to as
"the Bowling Green" and two dust
covered gravel yards on Broadway, that
. rich corporation has held in defiance
Of irreverent aldermen and enterprising
land-grabbers, it would be difficult for the
eye to rest anywhere on q token of its
youthful past.
In 1900 the city snuggled round Trim.
ity Church. Our fathers buried their
dead in st. Paurs churchyard. Then
they went up town, to what is now
Printing house Square, and began laying
the bones of their departed in the grave
yard of the old Brick Church on Nassau
street. But the pressure was too great.
In thirty years they began to take up the
bones and move them up town to Hous-
ton street-then in the fields-and later
the New York Times building rose over
the tombs of the Knickerbockers, and
Hoes presses to-day thunder in the vaults
of our grandfathers.
When those good people consecrated
the burial grounds at Houston street they
believed that the spot would remain sa-
cred to rest forever. In very few years
the pressure overlook them, and once
more they took up the relics of the de-
parted and sadly went up town with
them.
But If there has never been any rest
for the dead on the island neither has
there been any rest for the living. The
same pressure that made the bones of
our forefathers "move on" kept the
homes of the metropolis always shifting.
The social axis of New York has changed
every twenty years. Once it was at
Maiden Lane. Then 1t was at Chambers
street. Then 1t got up to Bond street,
then to Fourteenth, then to Twenty
third. And now to find any homes you
must take the elevated railroad and get
! out above Forty-second street.
Business, dOmesticity, culture, wealth
have crawled along this peninsula steadily
In q straight line, always an advance
| guard of residences, palaces, homes al
ways an arid desert behind warehouses,
shops and offices.
Like those long-necked birds which
are supposed to have but one intestine,
New York stands upon the seashore, its
head in Westchester county and its tail
in the bay, and everything passes along
its alimentary canal of Broadway.
Such city presents aspects of unrest
that will be found nowhere else in the
world. Foreigners who come to it at
tribute the restless, insecure air to the
character of the American people, but II
they 60 to other cities they will find do.
mains of beauty, tracts of secure home.
steads, places where enterprise rests and
adorns and builds permanent tiresides and
affairs. But New York, divided into q
section of compressed business, and
. section of temporary abiding places
| widely separated, is never secure. One
section is always encroaching on the
| other. The houses of the Hamiltons and
Rutgers and Beeckmans were built dura.
bly, on lower Broadway. They were
torn down to make way for more dura
able and costly banks, insurance office,
and warehouses. The DeWitts and Clin
tons and Astors built handsome houses
on Fourteenth street and Union Square
and then abandoned them when sur
rounded by shops. The Moffat mansion
on Union Square was wonder of prod
| igality when built. 1t gave way to the
present Century Building, which mus
have cost double what was expended on
the home. Mr.. A. T. Stewart spent
Q million on his white marble mansion
on the corner of Thirtv-fourth street
and Fifth avenue. 1t is now de-
serted and looks like a broken savings
bank. Not home tradition clings to 1t.
| 1t is as barren of associations as newly
whitewashed fence. The costly pictures
have been sold and two popular club
have had their eyes on the property fol
some time. 1t is perfectly safe to predic
that within ten years it will be occupied
by museum or q safe deposit company
Nor can any security be vouchsafed fol
the handsome Vanderbilt mansions
higher up the avenue. The present gen
Grafton may escape the pressure, but thu
next generation will ind the fashionabl,
tailor and the artistic chiropodist en-
croaching upon them, and they will sci
or let the property and 60 on farther VI
the island.
A man might as we'll undertake t.
build his family altar ON . quicksand a
to put up home anywhere south of tn,
Harlem river.
Jay Gould looked farther ahead thar
the Vanderbilts when he cast his ten
twenty six miles out from the city hal